


Minutes to Midnight

by Woad



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616, New Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Multiverse, New Avengers Vol. 3 (2013), New Year's Eve, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Unhappy Ending, incursions, the mindwipe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:58:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8836666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woad/pseuds/Woad
Summary: The Illuminati wipe Tony's memories instead of Steve's.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laireshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/gifts).



> Happy holidays, laire! It was really hard to pick just one prompt, so in the end I kind of did two. Surprise!
> 
> Many thanks to [a_sparrows_fall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall) for beta'ing and [nostalgicatsea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/pseuds/nostalgicatsea) for the cheerleadering and idea bouncing on this piece!

_New Year’s Eve, Four Minutes to Midnight_

Steve stands on the roof, eyes to the dark sky. Around him the waning moments of December in New York are cold and bracing. He so rarely sees stars in the city, but tonight lights streak across the sky, preempting the night’s celebratory fireworks.

His heart is beating too fast, thudding like a piston in his chest.

Someone is speaking over the emergency comm, but the voice is muted, little more than dull, senseless buzzing beneath the rush of blood and adrenaline in his ears.

◊

_Six Months Ago_

He goes to Strange first. His choice is partly because of where Strange came down over Registration, but mostly because of what he needs.

“You know what he’ll do if we don’t act first,” Steve says, remembering the nauseating pulse of power as the infinity gems cracked in his hand. The sound of solid stone fracturing still rings through his nightmares, chased closely by the look of determination frozen onto Tony’s face that day.

“Do I?” Strange arches a dark eyebrow at him, stroking his beard with one hand. His other rests on the raised ridges of a spell tome.

“It’s only a matter of time until he decides he has to take matters into his own hands. You’ve seen what happens when Tony takes unilateral action.”

Strange lets out a sigh. “Yes. I know. But what you're asking for isn't trifling magic. The sort of spell you want requires sacrifice.” Strange turns his gaze down onto the leather of the spell book.

“Like what?”

It takes a few moments for Strange to find the answer, his head tilted and lips pursed in thought, arcane formulas spinning through his mind. “The two of you. The relationship erased, as if it never were.”

_Steep price._ Steve takes a deep breath, wondering how such a cost can possibly be fair. Would it be worth all the nights falling asleep next to Tony, bone-tired but warm and satisfied—the fleeting kisses in the back of the Quinjet on long rides back to the tower—the soft looks when Steve returns from a solo run—the way Tony’s gentle hands always join his, helping peel Steve out of his suit?

Steve knew going into this that things between them could never be the same. After pulling memories from a lover’s mind, how could there not be a price to pay? But this…

And yet, even before setting foot in Strange’s Sanctum, Steve knew that if he didn’t pay, entire worlds would.

More than anyone else, Tony’s behavior is patterned. With tenacity and passion as the bedrock for all Tony does, there is no one that Steve would rather have at his back. And yet Tony’s drive is two-sided. It has always sprung from a dual fountainhead of both the best of intentions and a deep-seated, zealous need for control. Time and again, Tony has proven himself ready and willing to work within gray areas and to ignore the counsel of his closest friends.

So if personal sacrifice is the price to keep Tony’s hands clean—enough to keep the monster at bay—isn’t it worth it?

Because Steve knows the blood wouldn’t be metaphorical forever.

By the time he decided to visit Strange, it’s wasn’t a question of _if_ Tony would spill blood, but when. His lover began that swiftly ticking countdown long ago. Steve has been in the bowels of his lab. He’s seen the words “antimatter” and “bomb” in Tony’s scribbled handwriting. It was such a bitter pill to swallow: remembering that before he was Iron Man, before he was a hero, Tony was a weapons maker—realizing that the past lays buried, but the grave is shallow.

_Maybe,_ Steve thinks, _Strange’s way is better._

He knows that it will be hard, that Tony’s absence will be a hole, coring out his soul. It felt that way during Registration, and the ache didn’t lessen at all after Steve returned from wandering in time. Back then he never imagined he and Tony would get another chance.

But Tony is Steve’s twin star. They are destined to pull on one another, forever dancing in each other’s orbit. It took time, but it was enough to buy them a second chance, against all odds.

Steve isn’t naive enough to think they’ll get a third.

“No one would remember?” Steve asks.

“No, you would remember,” Strange replies, flipping the tome open. “It’s not true sacrifice unless you remember what you gave up.”

Steve swallows, looking down at his hands.

But he knows what comes next if he says no. Steve can see it laid out in front of him, practically memory. In a way, it is.

The vault and the Guardsmen. The Kree Supreme Intelligence. Registration. The very idea of the Illuminati. At every chance, at every turn, Tony has taken matters into his own hands. He’s had the hubris to think he alone knows best, and the arrogance to act on it—a bad combination, even on the best of days.

Steve always hated the sentiment and hates the way he once said it to Tony—but it’s _true_ —Steve has known one too many alcoholics to think it’s coincidence.

“I’m willing. You’ll do it?”

Strange nods. “If you get the others on board.”

◊

_Fifteen Minutes to Midnight_

“Steve. I’d say it’s good to see you, but for the circumstances,” Hank McCoy mumbles from the monitoring station they’ve set up in Wakanda. Steve watches him on the video feed, rubbing at tired, reddened eyes, which contrast sharply against his blue fur.

“What do we know?” Steve asks, fumbling his gloves on over the bright red glow.

“Not much yet,” Hank replies. “You caught us before we’d even set the clock for eight hours. The zone is over the Atlantic, south of Nova Scotia. How soon can you get there?”

A Quinjet is fast, but a planeswalking spell is faster.

“That depends on if Stephen’s left yet.”

“I’ll let him know you’re looking for a ride.”

“Thanks.” Steve shrugs on the cowl and hangs up the call with the press of a button.

“Steve?”

It’s Tony’s voice, but Steve has never heard the cocky timbre so full of uncertainty. His heart freezes, and for a moment he fears that Tony’s seen—that the spell has come undone and that Tony remembers.

But Steve turns and it isn’t Tony. Not his Tony, anyway.

◊

_Five Months Ago_

After the deed is done, it hurts to see Tony. Steve expected that, but he didn’t anticipate it to stir the grief that it does.

But it does, and he has to go on, bearing it silently. And although the fact that he no longer has Tony is the gravest wound, it all cuts so much deeper than that. Partly, it’s the way that every glance from Tony still has that warm camaraderie and respect. Those looks have an unhealthy amount of worship layered into them. And if Steve’s honest, he’s never really deserved that from Tony, and he certainly doesn’t now.

But the other part of his grief is for the missing spark in Tony’s eyes—a happy glow that used to light up Tony’s face, right before he canted his chin up for a kiss.

The absence of that spark stirs the strongest longings in Steve—makes him feel just like when he came back and Tony didn’t remember that Steve had been shot. There’s a part of the other man missing again, and this time it’s the part that held Steve’s heart with tender hands and loving words. And no one else even realizes it's gone.

Steve feels like a thief—a thief who has emptied his ill-gotten spoils onto a bonfire.  

And now, whenever Tony grins up at him from the Avenger’s machine console or the Quinjet controls, it takes everything Steve has to muster a smile in return.

◊

_Twelve Minutes to Midnight_

The man standing in the doorway has the same frame and the same face, he’s even wearing black and gold armor, eerily like Tony’s current built. But unlike his Tony, this man’s beard and black hair are sprinkled liberally with gray. He might be as little as a decade older than Steve’s Tony, but he has the eyes of a man who has lived lifetimes.

He’s standing rooted to the spot, blue eyes wide, disbelief etched into every inch of him. In one hand he has a small lantern-like object with a blinking red light. With a sinking feeling, Steve realizes he's seen schematics for something like it before—down in Tony’s workshop with his notes on antimatter bombs.

“You’re alive here.”

This Tony's voice is raspy with emotion, but it’s the words that make Steve’s stomach lurch.

“You’re from the other world, aren’t you?” Steve asks.

“Yes.”

“Part of the away team?”

He sees comprehension flare to life in Tony’s eyes. “In a manner of speaking. ”

He wonders if this Tony is acting alone—if he’s doing what Steve has tried so hard to keep his former lover from doing. The irony isn’t lost on Steve that for all he’s given up, it seems he’s destined to fight with Tony over the incursions.

“Why are you here?” Steve asks.

“I look on every world.”

“To see what’s left?” Steve is thinking of mapmakers.

Tony’s swallows. “For you.” He sets the device he’s carrying on the floor and takes shy steps into the room, drawing within an arm’s reach of Steve.

Steve studies him warily. He’s so much like his Tony that it burns to be the center of his rapt, hungry attention.

It’s the way that Tony used to look at him.

He should be asking a million things right now—about the other planet, about the incursions that this Tony has faced, about what Tony’s plan is here. He can guess well enough the answer to the last question: it’s sitting on the floor half a dozen paces away, red light still blinking.

Instead what slips out of Steve’s mouth is: “How long has it been since you lost him?”

“Eighteen years.”

Holy hell. Steve wonders if after eighteen years his Tony would look at him like that.

Tony tilts his head, as if memorizing Steve’s face up close, and Steve sees the spark in his eyes that he has missed so much these past six months. And like that, Steve knows. His Tony will never look at him like that again. Not after what Steve’s done.

◊

_Four Months Ago_

They’re lucky.

Steve and the other Illuminati keep circling around, chasing their tails, no closer to a solution that keeps everyone alive. He’s beginning to give up hope that they’ll find a way before they run out of time.

So far the worlds that have come into a collision course with their Earth have been empty husks: either they never gave rise to life or they’re little more than ravaged mausoleums, wiped clean by mapmakers. So far they haven’t had to do the unthinkable and decide the impossible. They haven’t had to pick which world survives.

Tony shows no signs of his erased memories returning, but the void that Strange’s spell leaves gets twisted in odd ways. It's as if echoes still shape Tony’s thoughts, leading him on tangential paths. He takes on an advisory position with the _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,_ and Steve learns about the Doomsday Clock.

“Three years ago it moved back by a minute, the first time it’s gone backwards since ‘91. And then last year the progress got erased. It moved up again—five minutes to midnight.” Tony shakes his head. “Honestly, after the Origin Bombs, I’m surprised they stopped it there. I know we can do better, Steve. The Avengers are bigger than ever. We can move it back to ten.”

Steve walks away from that conversation with dread coiled in the pit of his stomach. Tony is so optimistic. But he doesn’t have the whole picture. The clock, Steve reflects, really ought to be at thirty seconds. _If that._

It’s only a matter of time. And now whenever the red warning signal in his palm lights up, Steve asks himself if today will be the day that midnight strikes.

And so it goes—until New Year’s Eve.

◊

_New Year’s Eve, Ten Minutes to Midnight_

Steve is startled when the silver-haired Tony edges even closer—close enough to embrace, as though he still can’t believe that Steve is standing in front of him—as if he needs to touch him to affirm it.

“Sorry,” Tony blinks, drawing back a fraction. His weary eyes are still fixated on Steve, but they drift over the whole of him now. “Memory is a poor replacement.”

But Steve knows the look in his eyes, feels it mirrored in his own heart. How he misses taking Tony in his arms. Equal parts altruism and selfishness bring one of Steve’s arms up, sliding around the other man’s waist. “Agreed.”

Tony looks like he’s made of glass, like too rough a touch will cause him to crumble. “The last time I saw you, you were furious.” And then his reverent fingers are tracing the hard line of Steve’s jaw. “For so long that’s the only way I could remember you—like the last look was burned into my brain. You can’t know what it’s like to see you like this, like …” He doesn’t say it, but Steve knows what he's thinking. It’s writ plain in his eyes. _Like you could love me._

If this Tony only knew how wrong he was—if only he knew how brightly Steve burned for this world’s version of him—how Steve is the one who ruined everything.

Steve knows he should be securing the antimatter bomb or overpowering Tony to make him disarm it. It would be so easy, especially when Tony closes his eyes and leans into him. But maybe, just maybe, this can be different. Maybe Steve can convince this Tony to work with him. Together they can find a solution that isn’t saturated in violence.

Then Tony kisses him, and Steve’s world stops turning, all thoughts about incursions lost. Tony’s lips are tender on his, pliant and curious, and Steve returns the gesture in kind. He’s missed this so much.

“I always wondered what that would be like.” Tony is the one who breaks contact, and he whispers his confession against Steve’s neck. “But I never had the courage to ask until it was too late.”

Yearning and longing overwhelm Steve, even though he knows this isn’t the Tony he fell in love with. He wants to bend Tony over the machine console and just take him—reclaim what he’s lost. He thinks this Tony would let him, that he might even share in the underlying desire: one more regret washed away with sweat and hungry kisses.

Then the intercom in the room crackles and Steve startles, hearing his Tony’s voice, lighter and brasher than that of the man in his arms.

“Steve. The countdown is about to start. I'm not letting you miss it two years in a row. Stop working and get down here!”

Of course Tony doesn’t remember Steve there last year. Last year they stood under the mistletoe and kissed at midnight like the happy couple that they used to be.

Steve feels the older Tony’s fingers tighten on his arms. “You’re still friends here?”

“More than friends, at least for a time,” Steve says truthfully. He needs so badly for someone other than himself to know—needs for Tony to, even if he only tells a facsimile.

“But you’re happy? Both of you?” Tony is a man standing outside a treasury, looking in through a barred window.

_No._ Steve isn’t.

Something sharp snaps inside of Steve, bringing him into a fuller awareness of the man in front of him. His own selfish needs quiet for a moment, allowing him to see through the older Tony, just like he looked through his own and saw the dark place that the incursions would draw him.

Tony can be cold and calculating, but everything that Steve has seen of this one, even in the scant minutes that they’ve been acquainted, tells him the man won’t be able to merely leave the antimatter bomb. Not if Steve says yes.

“Yes.”

He silently wills Tony to disarm the bomb. They have a little under eight hours. It’s impossible odds, but there has always been a way before. They’ll work something out.  

But that isn’t what Tony does and Steve feels a creeping terror that he’s read the other man wrong. Tony steps backwards, hand slipping down and snatching up the bomb. Steve reaches after him, trying to keep him from doing something rash—to delay the inevitable, the terrible choice that they’ve had to skirt for so long. _Them or us._

But in the end, Steve is robbed of even that.

Tony disappears, scattering into particles as he teleports off world—taking the bomb with him.

Steve’s first instinct is to alert the others, but the comm only fizzles, static in Steve’s ear, when he tries to open a line. The next best thing then—get to them and the incursion point. Disappearing with the Quinjet on New Year’s Eve will raise questions, so Steve runs for the roof and the flying car gathering dust up there.

“ _—Steve—?_ ” As Steve sprints across the rooftop, he finally hears Reed’s voice break over the comm in his ear, fuzzy, as though emerging from some sort of local jamming field. “We’ve been trying to get through. Stephen’s already left. How quickly can you—” More static cuts into the feed, and when Steve can next make Reed’s words out again, his tone is completely changed, from grim to shocked.

“The other Earth—” he’s not talking to Steve directly now, but broadcasting to all of the Illuminati. “It’s breaking up. T’Challa, is that us? Did any of the team jump to the other world?”

“No,” the normally stoic T’Challa sounds just as baffled. “Everyone is home-planet side. All antimatter payloads are accounted for.”

“The larger pieces are going to enter our atmosphere,” Reed warns. “Everyone, stay clear of the skies if you can. Any ideas what caused this?”

Steve has a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he stops in his tracks. And he knows without a shadow of a doubt that it was what he said to Tony that set this into motion.

◊

_New Year’s Eve, One Minute to Midnight_

“There you are,” Tony—his Tony—sounds annoyed as he sidles up beside Steve. “You really don’t want to join the others for the celebrations? Thor is trying to convince de Costa to genetically engineer flying reindeer.”

“I’m not really feeling festive,” Steve replies, letting the darkness of the roof hide him and the horror that is steadily sinking into every bone of his body.

He badly misjudged the other Tony. He’d been right—that Tony wouldn’t destroy this world while Steve was on it. But he hadn’t fully understood the other side of that coin: the depths to which Tony would go to keep Steve—possibly any Steve—alive.

“It’s such a nice night, though.” Tony leans on the railing of the observation deck, a smile on his face as he looks out over the lights of the city. Then he looks up at the night sky. “I didn’t know there was meteor shower in the forecast.”

Steve’s throat constricts, struggling with words. “There wasn’t.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Forget Me Not (The Truths and Lies Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9815759) by [laireshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi)
  * [The Bitter Pill [Minutes to Midnight Remix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9854054) by [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/pseuds/ranoutofrun)




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